Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places

"Emily Zackin argues that the United States has a long history of positive rights protection, created and fostered by political outsiders who wanted to change society and disrupt the status quo. We will find this tradition not in the federal constitution, but in our country's many state constitutions. This is a crucially important book revealing an unjustly neglected feature of America's constitutional traditions."--Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School"Zackin has written a major challenge to conventional wisdom that American constitutionalism is committed to negative rights only. Her exceptional research and analysis has resulted in a work that will be both a classic of American state constitutionalism and American constitutional development."--Mark Graber, University of Maryland"This is an extremely important book that will be widely discussed. One of the pathologies of the standard approach to American constitutionalism is its exclusive focus on the U.S. Constitution and the concomitant ignorance of the rich materials to be found in the literally dozens of American state constitutions. This book will be an extremely important wake-up call for most readers."--Sanford Levinson, author of Constitutional Faith"This splendid book single-handedly establishes positive rights as core elements of the American constitutional tradition. Using a comparative case study of rights in education, labor, and the environment, Zackin overturns conventional wisdom by documenting a rich legacy of positive rights in state constitutions. Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places is provocative, important, and persuasively argued."--Charles R. Epp, author of Making Rights Real: Activists, Bureaucrats, and the Creation of the Legalistic State